Winter
Ann Minoff
the morning tide captures drifting ice /
piles of meaningless resolve /
dragging back to the sea /
a parade of frozen white /
have I turned away from love
again

The Cello
Andy Roberts
Fingertips over wire and wood /
I leaned into my cello for meaning

Genetically Isolated Since the Ice Age
Jessica Tyner
a flailing Kodiak bear dragging a rusted /
trap in my wake so you can all see where Iíve been /
until the starvation caught me /
tackled me to the earth and I breathed in the musk /
of where weíre all going

The Lost Teacher
David Chorlton
Where the wind cut low across the treeless /
hills with their edges of stone /
Mister Shaw took his paints /
to mix with earth he scooped bare-handed /
so heíd have more than the colour /
on the canvas

The Only Orange, Otherwise
K. Edward Dunn
Orange was the color of her dress, then blue silk; and /
she was a poet at her podium, thumbing through her /
pages like an upright bass solo, the rest of the quartet
quieting down

Pleasures of the Day
Charles Cessna
The pleasures of the day include /
your predictable distance from me /
at the breakfast table, the simple /
movement of your hands leafing /
back to the preface of a book, and /
even the shoes that are not in the /
closet.

Libertine / The Draw of the West
Suzannah Gilman
I passed neighbors
chatting on cool lawns /
a man stooping to gather oranges /
under a solitary tree, and came upon my own /
street and scene: my children trampolining /
through falling shadows of oak leaves

Immanuel, Arkansas
Kathleen Radigan
If we could ask the birds / in an on-camera expose they might say /
What causes two thousand humans to fall out of love? Spill from front doors /
in the morning, untangled from sheets and lovers

Cat People #4
Kyle Hemmings
if you want to bebop with me,
tabby-O, you'll have to get up /
on the downbeat / raise the hump /
on the catwalk / angora pouty /
singapura smirk

Immanuel, Arkansas
Kathleen Radigan
If we could ask the birds / in an on-camera expose they might say /
What causes two thousand humans to fall out of love? Spill from front doors /
in the morning, untangled from sheets and lovers

At a Red Light Map of a Girl Susan Milchman
maybe you found it on your own that day /
You envision making her pancakes / on a cold, winter morning; whisking /
devotion and years of serenity into the batter

A Dog and His Boy
Gale Acuff
And on evenings when the moon comes floating / to the top of the night, we sing harmony

Fall/Winter 2009-2010

Brilliance in Bed
Henry Rasof
Quick, quick / A blood-red sunset greets me /
In the mirrors of the night / I am looking for a particular /
Kind of voice

Chapbook

Summer 2009

Love Speeding Through
Michael Estabrook
What is there to know about love / or not to know? /
It is there, runs over you like a freight train / leaving you tattered,
breathless, confused / out of place and time /
for as long as it wishes

Reading Mayakovsky Caroline M. Davies
This line of trees with black winter branches / against the clean white field /
The Spaniel running to fetch a stick / an animal from a Breughel painting

Autistic Futures Taylor Graham
I wish the itch of shocking yellow /
across purple, how you used to /
swash the paintbrush with fingers /
wild to invent a world

Almost a Star
Bill Roberts
Heck, I was on my way, could have been a star /
made a name for myself, up there in lights /
Holy Mother, I could have been Judy Garland

Flower in the Sun James Anderson
I would pluck her / if she would have me / I would bury /
my nose in her / if she would lean my way

City Loop Thomas Kent
Come / Take my hand / We’ll fly up and / Plunge into the ground /
The tracks the train slipping / Through the tunnels like a silver eel

She-Warrior and Tuxes
John Glass
Thirty years would bring two-hundred more / issues, but I would happen upon grad school, aw shucks /
where did Stacie put that flashlight?

Watching the Trains George Moore
The Doppler is only an effect / In the real world the train /
burns a time all its own, not only / the sound of something /
shifting, wavering, growing / impossibly until it peaks /
in the hollow of your naked ear

Saving Lives in Chinatown Bob Bradshaw
Everywhere
frogs had appeared / at our feet. They were staring / at the traffic, watching /
the light turn green

For Adam Lisa Cole
I heard a poem once / where the poet set two lovers on train tracks /
making love. And they could not hear / the train coming straight for them

Postcard, Second Issue
Christina Manweller
Grapes on sale this week / one ninety-nine a pound /
I bought two. Pounds, that is / What are you selling? / My grapes / they're rotting on the vine

A Matter of Preference Howie Good
Wouldn’t you rather / we walk down / the avenues of rain / trading verses from Poe / like black roses

Orpheus and Eurydice:
2 letters
Deirdre Feehan
Red rumors rushed into my path with sharp grappling hooks:
She found gold in Alta. She pitched to Barry Bonds. She rafted the
Susquehanna, half way to China.

What's All This Stuff? John Calvin Hughes
What do you want from me? / I was sure I locked the door / and now there you are /
back in the closet, behind / the coats, rummaging / in the pockets, worrying /
my new shoes

Fall - Winter 2008

In a Pemex in Hermosillo Rose Hunter
The stores with the placards and the people / shouting “Mochilas!” /
are packing up as I watch / the road flood into the parking lot /alongside the gas
pumps

Sensazione Susan M. Williams
Somewhere, a painting looks back at you / with a blank expression. Did you hear that? /
It whispers, peering around the room

London by Night Paul Walker
I'd been off coffee for two years / Then I sank some Turkish in Soho /
It hit me like a depth-charge / I couldn't sit still

Lengua
Elise Levitt
I stop at every centimeter / of your skin /
white as a blizzard / Or a blank space on a page

The Beginning of Worry Walter James Preston
These days I only think about sleep / the euro, and how low the dollar is /
At present it's impossible / for me to think of things like: "The fabled romance between
the ocean and the breeze"

The Most Romantic City
James Anderson
Minneapolis is the most romantic / city in the world where /
steam rises from gutters and / snow falls in May

Postcard Transcendental Child Doug Ramspeck
And because I wanted you to join me /
in the sleeping bag, and because our bodies /
were damp with sweat when we awoke /
in the mornings, we waded naked into the shallows /
and bathed amid the yellow lotus and arrowheads

Summer 2008

Ringo, What Am I Living For? Mary Ann Mayer
I light up in bars. / Get ideas. / Like Ringo. /
Who knew he’d composed more songs than Lennon-McCartney?

From a Roman Villa Marciano Malvar Guzman
Turn around / Beneath your window / the things we love / are bursting /
into a world of daylight

Cashmink Smile Carl Leggo
how would my life be different if / when Jesus said /
Take my yoke upon you / I had heard Take my joke upon you

Van Gogh Laura Sobbott Ross
Was it the lead paint, / the absinthe, the canvas walls /
he hovelled and howled behind?

The Fish Dream Yun Wang
A six pound carp leaped into my lap, its round mouth reached for
my breasts. I jumped and saw a black pond in which galaxies swim.

Long Division Patrick Carrington
All the geometry she tried / the bending before Mary / the slanted walks in the rain /
couldn't stop the reversal to what / I told her was not quite true

osprey
devin wayne davis
dawn, come upon the rail / as morning trains / continue to pull in & out

My Mother’s Doves
Julie Eger
Fifteen years later she told me about the doves / how she pictured them every day, pecking away /
the little pieces of cancer and carrying them / to a place where they couldn’t hurt her anymore

Spring 2008

Another Fantasy
Penguin Football Robert Wynne
Karl Marx would be so disappointed / in what the free market / has done to intimacy. /
I miss you like the future misses the past.

Sitting Crowded on a Velvet Cushion Christopher Thomas
I've heard that Muslim soldiers are taught that if they
die an honorable death they / will be given 72 virgins when they get to heaven /
Let my crowded cushion be my heaven, let all 72 / be thin in the waist,
cute in the face, firm from stem to stern

Homage James Anderson
no lesbian ever loved women / as I have /
no man ever gazed / into more faces / or floated down Hennepin / Avenue to wait in cafes / as I have waited

PoemsBrent Calderwood
On August 4, 1975, thinking I looked Chinese / you immediately told the attending nurse / "Excuse me,
but this is the wrong baby. Please / take this one back and bring me my son."

Buddha Woman Speaks and Surrenders, Again Rachel Kellum
We never agree. You say throw the plates! / I say make them gleam / I am tired of our existential arguing /
Of cutting myself in pieces for your uses: Mother, writer, sister, teacher, lover, painter, blue.

Meagan's Motorcycle
Efficient as a Clipboard William DoreskiYour T-shirt clings like a debt / and your blue jeans assume a life / of their own. We slog through rubble /
and laugh away the cant and orgies / of lives we shouldn’t have tried to lead

I'm Not a Spiritual PersonJohn Eivaz
i'm not spiritual, not even myself, this i know / so many whorls of crumbling dust, and i'm my own

Winter 2007-2008

Record Store ClerkMackey Q. Williams
I was spinning singles for a while / Like a disc jockey before satellites / Donovan, The Miracles, a 12 inch from King Tubby

From a Bangkok HostelBrianna Lee
So I cannot understand how this happens/ how we walk out of our homes / how we kiss the walls and run our palms / against smooth doorknobs / desperately making
last minute mental pictures

The Lion PausesJonathan Rutigliano
Visiting New Hampshire / With a good friend; Michael / Between deep inhales / We saw Jesus on a canoe / Fishing Lake Winnipesaukee

Rain on the outside dry skies withinMarc Swan
yes / she wears Spanx to keep the expanding flesh / in the right direction / and there are creases where smooth skin once lived / but her eyes are like quicksilver / high cheeks lively and pink

After buying the first houseKristin Stoner
taking back roads, (the only way / a farm kid knows how to travel) / 30 miles over the limit to bluegrass /
and the anticipation of a fresh fridge

Corinne runs away with AaronKristine Ong Muslim
If we could only live the secret lives of dolls / All their dresses have not gone dirty yet, not /
yet ruined by refinement and good taste

Fall 2007

See Her Hands How They Plait Ellen Pober Rittberg
do not give her a life / of vague longings / watching the world /
from room corners / her body, bowed / but let her not run too fast

Highway of DiamondsRobert Warrington
When his head became heavy / he started to walk / down a highway of diamonds / through a country of immigrants /
resentful of immigrants / and saw in each star / a faulty utopia

Remember Paris?James Anderson
They're different now I / except for this table / and Lyndale Avenue and your / hair and the way you smiled /
at me and the way he always calls

The Roses Linden
Leonore Wilson
they see us in the early morning / devoted to union, as if the rain and / mist of our song could hover /
in mid-air like the eight-string / burgeoning of the thrush’s voice

Robert Johnson’s CigaretteJohn Brightturning the blues
into something else / a pact with the devil / a hell hound on his trail / the lights on a locomotive

1954Night MovesIan C. SmithThe boy rehearses his life / as if he senses the road ahead / conjures a blanket of rain /
to cushion sound / and sweeten the atmosphere / turns another page

Ode to a SweaterRuth Latta
The beads around the neckline / in artful pattern / were like the lyrics of "The Snowy Breasted Pearl" / like a child's first teeth / beneath
a pillow of wishes come true / like a little girl's first necklace

Spring 2007

Pluto Becomes an Un-Planet Nina Bennett
What must it feel like to no longer be a planet / when
all you’ve ever known is the awe / of schoolchildren as they memorize your name

A haiku made from broken glass
No Direction HomeAlex Stolis
She doesn’t know how she got lost, it’s hard to navigate / by the stars in
the rain and she really doesn’t remember / if it was the current that
swept her away or the distraction / of the waves

Language RequirementMichael Keshigian
In college, he elected jazz as a language, dropped French so he could learn
that chops meant playing the sax like Paul Desmond

FlauntingBeliefArun Gaur
Kamlovik, at 72, has made a fine decision— / to have just one white butterfly flower /
pinned at the top

Little House Dogs PreferLeslie LaChance
Your terrier does not need your guitars and whistles and maracas / your Tevas
and Doc Martens and two sets of Nikes

Thirty-four DollarsRob Plath
Once when I was nine-years old / I found $34 in the street / I ran home and
told my parents / my father's eyes widened

on the mall in the center of townPJ NightsI had my train card for the month / I talked to men from Mars in the courtyard
of Au Bon Pain / I slept with a boy who made violins

Breakfast TroublesBob Bradshaw
So I try on some new Spirit Names: "He Who Hardly Ever Saw Animals in New York" / "He Who Saw Two Deer, Finally"

Strong and SuddenGloria J. Bennett
My host calls to me from the living room to make certain I don’t miss the
running of the bulls
this morning, so I quickly step into my red and black skirt,
the long flowing one that he says makes me look like a
native

Summer 2006

to myself, at 52John Eivaz
there are times you look in the mirror and, except for the wrinkles
and sag and missing hair, you can still see the guy
ready to rock downtown, surprise a girl, drink all night

What about the Vultures?Ryan Scott
Not knowing how, I found myself hanging from the end of the earth. Taking it for a dream, I tried to let go and wait
for the impact to wake me.

Apologia to a VineEric Diamond
Maybe you are wild Islamic vines, ready to sacrifice the tree, and
even yourselves, to reach Allah and
the seventy-two virgins?

photo by Jason Black

What Grey Smells LikeGabe Long
Inhale. It's in the way raindrops rip canyons / through a windshield / after trickling out of heaven / twenty-six hours straight.

Devilled CrabsBill Roberts
These crabs remind me of the Devilled Crab Man / the glistening black man who'd show up / erratically during our summers with a tray /
of still-warm toasted crabs in each massive hand

Spring 2006

the blue dress poemsKristy Bowen
Somewhere a dress slips / from a woman's shoulder / and sets off a war

Mambo UrbanoPhillip Henry Christopher
the ghost of a poet / outside City Lights / a Salvadoran revolucionista / whose song is conviction

Backyard SinfoniettaJill L. Ferguson
One Wilson's warbler, the cantor of the group / emits bel canto / to a packed-house audience / that only she can see

Distant FirePaul D. McGlynn
On this tranquil Tuesday afternoon / I stare into your seablue eyes / Make plans to enter, stay there, live there

this poem can swimRichard Lighthouse
pulling thru papered immersion / no more fear / no disbelief / nothing held back / this poem can swim

betwixt and betweenJames Lineberger
boy does he have a surprise coming / when they up and do away with knees altogether / and push us out in the water /
with tails look like they come off a fifty nine caddy

Things My Mother Never Told MeFredrick Zydek
That words spoken could be reproduced, put on paper / to be read again and again, didn't seem like / a mystery to me until after I passed fifty years of age

Dream of Extraordinary EaseJane Olmsted
Somewhere in the world our grown children are living / On weekends they call / or when they need something / like reassurance or money or our voice

Fall 2005

Dvorak and the Crows Lee Passarella
As always, he thinks of black bread, ripe soil, deep woods. That will become the jumpy first theme of his Opus 96 Quartet.

The Bohemian in Winter Christopher Barnes
So this life is never-ending / he squanders only Art / makes secret studies of survival / flings abracadabras up to evening stars

blues
the rain writes blackP.J. Nights
the blues in our lives are both the deepest and most transparent / I once got an F in art for trying to watercolor the three-dimensional blue of twilight

Unclaimed Epiphany A. Michael McRandall
It’s not the heat or even the lack of prayer from the congregation—you wouldn’t expect salvation to follow you anyway

Summertime
Mark Gaudet
my first summer with a girlfriend / I quit my job / she never went to college orientation

The Murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts Jack Conway
It is all there before us like any number of pins dancing on the head of an angel. And yes, wasn't it you, Mr. Boo Boo Plinker, who bought a Braille copy of Lolita and spent hours alone licking the dirty parts? How on earth can you say we were cut out for this life?

SelflessJim Ellis
You let yourself entertain the thought: wouldn't it be nice this opening day / if the macho neighbor who pumps out his sump pump / into your yard, not his / was mistaken for a turkey

Arteries The Hard WayGreg Braquet
I could tell you about my family...I could, just not today / Déjà Vu is everywhere / As I unlearn my way to puzzles

ZubeidaAmitabh Mitra
days and nights in old delhi / have always been streets that have weathered misfortunes

In Love, Wearing Heavy CoatsBob Bradshaw
Sometimes we linger in front of a restaurant / looking through the glass as if staring into an exotic aquarium / What must it be like to eat whenever you want?

Summer 2005

Reaching 80 TogetherTim Bellows
no holding back—this day’s become a universe, clear-sky, some
glassy mineral crystallized. in this we’re agile as piano masters,
playing the impromptus. the music breathing in pauses and
leaping-out miracles.

Love as a Spatial PresumptionS.E. Rindell
Wrapped in the dim dust
of faraway stars we take
our flesh for intangible;
we are absent in the manner
of a black hole

Joe
Home Vanessa Kittle
I saw your little footprints in the snow -- size five -- / laid down on your way to work that morning / I walked over them, tracing their path backwards / with my big ugly feet, so I wouldn't get my socks wet

Marching With SaintsPatrick Carrington
Like my brothers, I take a jar of both of your sauces for the road. And when
I find that special whore who makes me hungry, high-stepping in parade
with feathers redder than your best Jerseys...

BackKelley White
The sun laughs with a baby’s face / and breathes back the fire from Nagasaki / look, so fast, the buildings restore

Hibiscus Amber Clark
Love, you left a tidal ache / In this still-young body / a spate of sorrow fisting / my solitary heart, in a paradise / meant for two

Ambivalence
Peter Montfort
Mother before she was Mother could / drink the Berkeley boys under the table or / slam that tennis ball to the forehead / bull's-eye and later primly take her seat / in the cello section

Hardbed Blues Kelley White
I’m trying to learn to sleep by myself / I’ve been trying to learn this for years / I work hard all day then I turn out the light / but the nights in the city fall hard, so hard

Gray Dog
Rebecca Kiernan
The razor gray Thursday we got the news / Of your deployment / The verdict came out of a hat / Just like the movies / they pick the pilot / About to retire and cartoonishly in love

There's MusicJohn Eivaz
i'm a sack of water you're a waterfall / Arlo's sweet, a nip on a hot lobe nape nuzzle

Tai Chi MasterPapa Osmubal
A while back he was a rainbow / Then a current of a river: he knows the language of water.

Ken Harrelson's Nehru Jacket
Steve Brightman
A faux pas larger than fashion --
larger than the game --
almost slid by unnoticed,
save the laughter of
a few Kansas City beat reporters.

Chapbook

Roomful of NavelsCraig R. Kirchner
A contemplation of mondo Zen, irresistible women, and that whimsical fellow Work Ethic,
in a pink haze of holiness, surrounded by hundreds of drawings of navels, no two quite alike.

train roll Chris Kornacki
i love the flowing steel rivers
of
trains; i love to move & be pulled slowly or quickly into my humanity;
i
love everything that takes me away & drives me deeper into the
Heart-Heart-Heart

The Suicide Social Club
Jack Conway
This infectious experiment will ultimately be cured / so let the night place one of her celestial fingers to her lips / as we join the joiners trying to pick the lock at death's door

Flying Bamboo Uma Asopa
It grew beyond the house in leaps and bounds / feeding on my mother’s singing every morning -- catching up with sounds / and the poignant words

Striptease Matthew Gleckman
The birch tree is the boldest, sliding / off her white elbow-length gloves / and shaking another yellow / tassel into the crowd

Fall 2004

The Bodies We Press Tightly Christopher Cokinos
This is holy / how strangers everyday are everywhere / gone to the air, the air / the bodies we press tightly, unafraid.

Available Light
Advice for Little GirlsAmanda Auchter
Show me a door slammed & I will walk the edges / sink into a thin black line, tunnel out beyond its cracks /
track down your footsteps, wear the night on my back.

Summer 2004

Fanlights
ItineraryRebellionMargarita Engle
Maybe it's time to start re-designing that saddle for dolphins, the one I rode a few years ago, when so many of my travel dreams required an uncanny ability to breathe underwater.

Twenty Minutes
Dun Aengus
Liam Day
I feel I owe her, at the very least, a poem, a really good poem, one that connects her life to the space program, and even to the ancient Celts, who got this whole train of thought moving, after all

An Arsenal for All Ages
Richard Fein
Two weeks later, my wild arena of small boy fantasies / was shaped into to a perfect diamond design / The departing workmen said I was old enough / and rightly should be the first to join

Chapbook

Go
Martin Burke
A three-part contemplation on the beauty found
in the cities of the heart, Go travels through Venice and Greece,
always starting out for the islands, looking for the boatman, questioning the burdens and blessings
in the turbulence and calm of the world.

Spring 2004

Landscaping a Year in Paradise Michael Zbigley
Yesterday the weeds went to seed / and when I pulled them they burrowed small tears / into my palms. God waits as water / sheathed in the fingers of succulents. / Music quivers as sun.

Tree/Arbol
With TimeChristy Wegener I am scraping moments out of this city / sending them to you / screaming color

Frog WatchingWindow WalkerJoel YoungFrogs sit on their pads / rib each other about their warts / sing poetically to their darlins / like philosophers in a coffeehouse

San Francisco Bob BradshawMaybe it was the adrenalin of flag waving / But when he walked into that room / the dance floor as crowded as martinis / on a tray / I saw him

CadizJack Kerouac's House
Kelle Groom
First night in town, a seaport in southwest Spain / the chaplain's daughter said / if they find hash on you, no matter who your father is / they throw you in jail / where Americans have accidents / especially on stairs

4-6-3 PoetryMichael Schein
the kiss of the ball / in the outstretched mitt / as the runner’s arched foot / slaps first
slicing the moment / like shaved ice / alternate universes / branching before the eyes of thousands

Ticket to Desire
Ed Markowski
back then, ours / was a league / where a short foul ball / bought you a one way ticket / to desire

Winter 2003-2004

Postcard to SamanthaItalian TrainsGitanesMaurice Oliver
In a northern sky of late winter / between sunset and night with snow / like tea dust falling a train / pretends to be a single lamp riding / the lip of a river that streams / like oil pressed from warm olives

Spitting Quasars George Sparling
The man's dark
energy made cosmic because of his openhearted, though passive intimacies shared with
me in hypothetical dreamtime after I’ve pulled out all his pockets’ paraphernalia onto the
inevitable concrete surrounding him like 200,000,000,000 stars.

Ramla
Family Album
Ashok Gupta
Tan plays a game with a tank / a step to the left a skip to the right / till it is a game no more / Tiananmen Square

A Small Red Star for Me and My FatherTom Sheehan
This appointment came when light tired, this arrangement, this syzygy / of him and me and the still threat of a small red star standing / some time away at my back, deeper than a grain of memory.

sea of tranquility P.J. Nightspristine and clean / a gold coin face in relief / or a balloon filled / with ee cummings' pretty people / flying from a city Oz-like and green

My Sister's Bones
Eve in Homer, Alaska Cinthia Ritchie You be Eve, / he said, handing me / a peach because they were on sale /
at the Safeway, and he was / a man of thrift and common sense / with a pension plan and health /
insurance and nylon socks rolled / color to color in his third drawer

Mykonos 1940 Stella Apostolidis Groups of landmasses not big enough / For a civilization / But sweet enough for dreams / And lazy afternoons / With a frappe in one hand / And a French cigarette in the other

BloodWork Ann RegentinYou have done the things I wanted most with all my heart to do / and when you come to me, I live it out / My wasted voice, my crippled body brought to life again

Three Theses
Josh Hanson
toward language / what language but this: / the words speak only / of the music they speak / or else silence / or failing that, too / poetry.

On Buying our Daughter a Camera
August 6, 1945 Jalina Mhyana
There’s a grave for my mother at Hiroshima / where you can still see victims’ shadows printed on the ground where they burned / human-shaped photograms blackening the sidewalks that would have caught their falls

About DestructionKristy Bowen
In this, you tell me I am like / my mother, the sad oval / of her face, disappointment / lingering at the corners / of her mouth, anger in her bones / And I remember how I must / kill her again and again /
to love you.

Sparkling to the last drop, the poems in Dirt Therapy travel through the chameleon-like moments of our ordinary days, shifting with the currents of love and loss, digging through the debris left by iced lies and revelations from lonely-heart lost socks. But somewhere between the hot peppers and the laundry, not far from the bickering tomatoes and menage-a-trois cheeses, the true colors of nature begin to shine through...

Prose Poems from The Blind City Charles Lowe
We would go to the fancy restaurants with the fish tanks jumbled in the front window. I would browse each lit box until I found my favorites: the fresh bluefish from the Hai River, their lips pressing the glass, the lobsters clustering together in the brine, their claws snapping at my fingers, the waiter dipping a net into the fresh water and with prongs, grabbing at the claws.

Don't Make Mistakes
Ashok Gupta
When you alight from the train / look for Ramdhun, the rickshaw-wala / Tell him you want to go to chowk and / pay him two rupees no more

Break Robert Pesich and Michael J. Vaughn
In a game of blind draw, everyone has a number / stripe or solid, win or lose / the crack of a kiss echoing in the heart’s pocket

Summer 2003

Crazy-Ass Grackles Dennis Mahagin
It swaggers around the pine cone trunk of a big palm -- super model stalking /a hall of mirrors, little onyx head nodding to a headphone / backbeat and bassline bubbling up / from the irrigated root system / just for her

You Talk to Me About Italy
Kristy Bowen
You speak to me low and fondly / like a cat from the Coliseum / that followed you back / to your hotel in the rain

The Salvador Dali Blues
William Sovern
Picasso sat in the crimson lipped back seat /with a nude and a musician playing / Dylan on a mandolin

I Wonder, When I am DeadK.R. CopelandWill he ultimately dig me up, dust me off / and dance about with my cadaver / underneath an understanding moon?

The Outskirts of New Haven
Robert Gibbons
But Mao’s original idea of switching peasants / from the fields & factories / into classrooms, sending / students out for real experience just might work here / sold as revisionist history

What You Want Rebecca Cook
Let's pretend I'm a virgin / and you're the world’s greatest lover and / you reach into me with your elegant / spoon and scoop out pearl after pearl / perfect against your teeth

Stephen Roxborough
wandering aimlessly in the desert...forty days and four thousand nevada nights of roadrunners and bathing suit sunners and dust devils & wide blue skies and power ties and car exhaust and caesar's tossed and neon neverending and petroglyphs and throw-away gifts and miles and miles and miles of aisles of slots promising the ultimate jackpot for the illusion of delusion

The way the woman on the phone slowly says Multiple Sclerosis Society with a gorgeous southern whiskey drawl of long porches drenched in bougainvillea and lemonade slow blues and torpid birds
lazy in long notes, I feel I must have
some sort of sclerosis myself.

Of Cuckolds and Crucifixions
Pump Your Own GasLaura McCullough
Cirque Du Soleil can’t conceive of something as everlasting / as a virgin who got laid / but didn’t get any of the fun / setting up 2000 years / of female sexual guilt

Everything BlueTracy C. AlstonLike one goes down to the River Nile / To rest and feast awhile / Like when you dance and go down / All the way down 'til you touch the ground

Mimics in the Mist
Richard Denner
Mimics brush by / in white face and tattered tux / I turn, they turn, my turn, their turn / doubles hide in every word

Ice Princess Joanne Detore-Nakamura
From Third Ave to Palmer Street / It's a blur, a montage of Risky Business meets Blue Lagoon / a fade-out into a tropical island

Another Kind LightRobert Gibbons
The naked light you carry around the house, the cleanliness you cause like rose petals on linen cloth.

Morning After Arlene AngSpread the butter lightly / Take your time -- we couldn't crumble the bread too soon / Have to admit, my fingers are clammy from too much handling of burnt toast

train of lover's thought Stephen Roxborough
take me right there again, take me right there / where the warning whistle sings a sad siren song / a deep mournful tone of a wistful wanting horn / connecting the past to a future reborn

Escape Artist
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
My kitchen is Gucci Butter Rum Tart / I was fractured that day / And money didn't get in the way

May Touch Redeem Us
Bill Noble
A wide-ranging collection of erotic poems, some playful, some profound. Many are meant to be read aloud; some are meant to be whispered. We hope you'll share them with someone you love.

Another Boring Academic Poemby Michael A. HoermanI prefer cruder poems / such as this one, recalling the musky smell of her loins and taste / of her kiss

Level 4 West
Time by Candy Gourlay
Squashed like an insect / beneath the boots of life / before youth had half a chance / to sprout shoots from the dirt and party / at the club down the street / where these legs once danced in hipsters

Pop Poetry 101by William Sovern
on the other hand, I got to read poetry in New York three times / the last dancing with the Nuyoricans / hip hop slammers / three days before / 911

lamborghini smiles
infinite sadness walking by Merlin Greaves
disheveled as though i had fallen off a table somewhere / i struggled to attach onto some kind of expression / one that said no / one that said not this time / one that said i'm not ready / all i got was why

I Gave You My Watchby Ward KelleyFor me, I asked for your clothes, since it was your / nakedness I desired. Is nakedness better than time?

Calcutta Poemsby Prasenjit Maiti
You and me in Paradise while my salad days fornicate in Calcutta, my days and ways being served as funky platters of crab casserole, ecstatic white steam sizzling and blue skies burning in agony.

Street of Flagsby Janet BuckI don't recall another 4th where seas of U.S. flags / bedecked a solid mile of road. The avenue is lined in cloth,
a carpet to the wasted graves of those we dug and dug to find.

all their characters reflected in my faceby P.J. Nightsploùra, ploùra, ploùra from the tree frogs / it will rain, it will rain, it will rain / and it does -- cats and dogs and frogs -- over an opaque sugar-cube sky

The Very Stuff by Stephen Beal
Okay, all right, I confess: I would dress as a woman to wear this red. I would put it all on, wig and makeup and padding,
lingerie and nylons and three-inch heels, just to enter a room in this red. And knock them dead.

Jumping Bean
Champagne for One by James R. Whitley
As I’m heading home one evening / I see a group of children kneeling / on their dirty knobby knees, circling around / playing with a jumping bean

So Much in Five Worlds and Five Sunsby P.J. NightsShe pounded out piano recitals for one / rants in E minor denying her wish / for prom dresses in iridescent feathers / for birthday gifts of turquoise and gold

Providence, July, 1974by Lisabet Sarai
some of the streets / will only come out / after supper / in summer / only untwine / as I ride them

In Love With a Married Man
Wedding Cakeby Teresa White
We walk off the top of our wedding cake / into the cool green garden of the world / We are tall in our black and white clothes /
You lick frosting off my fingers until they are new

Turncoat Appliances
The Bike Rideby c nolan deweese
You have to be careful when talking of three / (controls the world with pyramid schemes) / Third day is always where change comes in fairy tales

All Things Consideredby J.D. HeskinMy life is not perfect / For instance, the chair I am sitting on leans to the left / and the burger I just ate was too spicy.

Remembering
The Endby Darlene Zagata
The sun was shining / a large topaz draped in denim / Then thunder cracked, a horrible sound / like the stars being flogged into submission.

Audio

Main Squeeze Bluesby Jennie Orvino
I had a fling with the chief of police / cruising black and white, clinching to the crime radio / But he never stayed 'til morning, left me dialing 911

For Alcaeus by Scott Poole
I can't even imagine / trying to swim in a toga / My God / It must have been like / making love to curtains / without the rod.

Streets for Two Dancers by Robert Gibbons
“It’s obvious,” he complained, “that you are protected by women & books.”

Chaos Theoryby Karen Mandell"Or," you say, reaching for the butter, your arm from
elbow to fingertip longer than your entire body at birth,
"consider Chaos Theory. Everything has an effect, even that drink,
but it'd take eons to measure."

CitizenX
by Brian Turner
when she slides the clothes from her body like this / clouds unveil the milkwhite skin of the moon, yes, / every neon sign in the world hums into crackling vibrance

to hell in a handbagby P.J. Nights
for the price of one glass of wine at the bistro / and my new look / i get the rest of my alcoholic haze for free

Grandfather's Chairby Janet I. Buck
She must have been poised on your lap / Forgotten her work, made you her yarn / skipped a stitch, gone for touch

Soup Sonnetsby John Eivaz & P.J. NightsSoup Sonnets is the way a gasp of excitement sounds, when you take it
easy. Like a good movie, it has merging molecules. These 28 sonnets cover all the
angles: love, action, comedy, and drama, with flashbacks sometimes only
one word long.

Winter 2001 - 2002

Hangover Sestina by P.J. Nights
If the stars of Gemini hadn’t been invaded by Jupiter / perhaps that malarkey with the crocodiles / wouldn’t have left me here at the North Pole / crying into my over-the-top tequila shot.

A Kiss in Dreams by Rebecca Lu Kiernan
I watch you sleep for the last time.You were to be my / stepdaughter, laughing angel, fragile pixie. I have been / planning my getaway for months, feeding and dressing / You, trying to detach myself.

Satori in the Fifth by Michael K. Gause
The second drink / finds my tears diluted / with whiskey, the glass on the
table

Falling Back by Lytton Bell
The dark man's bed is already on fire / by the time she runs to it / it has, by all accounts, spontaneously combusted

Selected Poemsby John EivazJackson Pollock's Lucifer / hung in a girl's bedroom / until she left for college / and then was placed / in a common area of the house

The Best Two Things about Verlaineby Robert GibbonsAngels have begun to inhabit the larger bells / which seemed to have been abandoned, / & with that, a chorus of song rang out / orchestrating a regular Christmas / Babes in Toyland atmosphere / or wonderfully cacophonous Bruegel.

Long Distance Loveby Lawrence Schimel
As far as the poem is concerned / this is our sole sustenance / and if we remember brunching / it was only for the pleasure /
of feeding one another

Who's the Ju-Ju Man?by Pasquale Capocasa
Two drinks into the new bottle / I glanced up and into the bar / mirror to see a man standing / behind me, leaning heavily / on a slender, wooden pole. / Odd, I thought.

Unintentional Provincesby Kathryn Rantala
We are hurtling / pressed and folded in two suitcases / We are hurrying / paying the intercity charge and buying wine

Route 1 Free Associationby Tony Gruenewald
You'd think you were Neal Cassady / if you only knew who he was / but you don't / so you also don't know / you're just settling /
for fancying yourself a / James Dean, who unlike Cassady / couldn't handle the speed.

Those Old Suntannersby Tom Sheehan
You know, the old summer Class A's they saved from their promised long weekend leaves, those killers, those formidable young warriors,
those hot Omaha Beach swimmers with salt in their noses and in gun barrels and curing half the ills and evils they had ever known...

Blue Highways by William Sovern
someone once said the test of true friendship is a 200 mile trip with the radio off

Prose Poems by Robert Gibbons
Her lack of modesty, the exact opposite of the Indian girl in the crowded Oaxacan market, almost invisible under the awning just down from one of the chocolate stalls, who turned my head so quickly Manuel Avila Camacho whispered, "Virgin!" which warned, "Do not touch, even with your eyes!"

Selected Poems by Jessy Randall
The ruby slippers of the Amtrak ticket click and click together in my purse. Wishing is useless.
You have to be left alone
to get home.

Internet Heavenby Robert R. Cobb Dear Lord of All above / beyond infernal, etheral space / through Your eternal love /
please prepare me a place / where I may receive and send / e-mails as I rest in peace

Free Booksby Lawrence Schimel
I began to know / the frustration Hercules felt each time he chopped off / one of the Hydra's heads, and two more grew / to take its place.

exile of the sunby Derek Kittle
i fear i shall never regain my place on the sun / the climb is much too high / and where could i ever find the ladder